Mage compendium - Part 2: Specs

As with part 1, this references posts by Billy, myself, Elitist Jerks and the WoW forums:


Fire – 20/51/0 Example

Fire is a fun spec to play if you like very big numbers, but comes at the cost of slow casts and spiky damage. Sometimes you will get lots of crits, hot streak procs and thus huge dps. Other times you will be much lower. It’s not as crit dependant as FFB however, and will usually gear for gear, out dps arcane on long fights. This will change in 3.2.2, if the talent changes on the PTR remain as current.

Fire is a very hit dependent spec – unless you have very good gear, you will notice a big dps drop if you are not hit capped. It is also highly dependent upon the full range of raid buffs to do competitive dps; you are likely therefore to be outdpsed in 10 man raids and 5 man instances.


Talents

Take World In Flames, but don't take Dragon's Breath or Blastwave. You will get sufficient AOE from flamestrike, Living Bomb and Blizzard, and the points are best put elsewhere.

Don’t take combustion – as a result of dot ticks munching the charges, this talent is considered virtually worthless at the moment. This may all change in Patch 3.2.2.

Personal preference talents to complete the 20/51/0 spec include Student of the Mind, Arcane Meditation, and Flame Throwing.


Stats

Hit (until Cap) – Spellpower - Haste - Crit - Spirit/Int

The amount of crit you need for fire is unclear – something between 25-30% unbuffed is probably fine. Haste has a bigger difference on your dps than crit, and this stat on orange gems should always be chosen over crit.


Spell rotation

Fire rotation: Living Bomb, Scorch x5 (if you are the scorcher – if not take pity on the scorcher and cast a couple to start them off), Fireball, Pyroblast on hot streak proc, Fireball etc. Refresh Living Bomb every time it explodes and keep scorch up.

AOE rotation: Living Bomb, Flamestrike, Blizzard. Exact combination depends on how quickly the mobs are likely to die!

Living bomb can be cast on multiple targets, which obviously increases the hot streak proc chance on detonation. Best benefit is probably from casting on 2-3 additional targets, and only refreshing if the fight is a long one. Be warned: this will increase your aggro markedly if the tanks are trying to hold large groups.


Glyphs

The glyphs for fire are Glyph of Molten Armor, Glyph of Living Bomb, and Glyph of Fireball. Do not take Glyph of Improved Scorch, as calculations suggest the dps loss from losing any of the other Glyphs to make space for it is greater than that lost by keeping five stacks of Scorch up.


Arcane – 57/3/11 Example

Arcane is the second highest DPS mage spec at the moment, and is likely to become the highest again in Patch 3.2.2. The price to pay for all this damage is being out of mana less than 2 minutes into the fight. So timing Evocation, Mana Gems and potions is crucial. Arcane is based around three spells: Arcane Blast (AB), Arcane Barrage (ABarr), Arcane Missiles (AM, MBarr (Missile Barrage). Post-patch, the rotation will generally drop Arcane Barrage. Arcane has always been very mana intensive but has been able to put out a lot of damage. The main arcane spec is 57/3/11 going down the frost tree to pick up Icy Veins and Precision. There are variants of this spec but this is the one that outputs the highest DPS.

The reason why arcane puts out so much damage is the change in Arcane Blast: it now buffs the next arcane spell cast.

Also, with this spec you want to use Evocation when ever it’s off cool down. With the arcane talent it will be reduced to two minutes.


Stat prioritisation

Hit Rating – Spellpower – Haste – Crit – Spirit/Intellect

*This spec will benefit from spirit and intellect a lot more than FFB spec.


Glyphs:

Arcane glyphs are: Glyph of Arcane Missiles / Glyph of Arcane Blast / Glyph of Molten Armor
*Most Arcane mages are starting to use Molten Armor instead of Mage Armor and considering Mage Armor Glyph is useless because with Arcane Meditation our Mana Regeneration would exceed 100% it's best to take Glyph of Molten Armor and use it for short fights, or less mana intensive fights using Mage Armor when appropriate.


Rotation:
There are two main rotations:

Arcane Blast – Arcane Blast – Arcane Blast – Arcane Missiles – Arcane Barrage
*This rotation asks for AM even if MBarr has not proced.

Arcane Blast – Arcane Blast – Arcane Blast – [Missile Barrage(AM)] – Arcane Barrage

[x] = Conditional

The difference between these two rotations is that the one on the bottom does a tiny bit more damage but it’s more mana consuming and the one above it does a tiny bit less damage but the difference in mana consumption is worth it.

*In Patch 3.2.2, it is likely that the preferred rotation will be Arcane Blast x4, Arcane Missiles (Missile Barrage if procced, but only used on 4 AB stacks)


AoE Rotation:
Flame Strike – Blizzard
*There are other rotations around, find what is more comfortable for you.


Macros:

We went down the frost tree and picked up Icy Veins so to take full advantage of it we want to use it with Arcane Power. Before 3.0.9 we were able to use PoM in the same macro but we can’t any more as they share an internal cool down to avoid the use of PoM / AP / Pyroblasts in PvP. The cool downs on Icy Veins and Arcane Power don’t match very well at the moment so there are two ways of using them: either casting AP when every it’s up and trying to match it with Icy Veins or using them both when Icy Veins is off cool down. Technically keeping up AP is the highest DPS but personally, I have other things to pay attention to so I use the macro whenever Icy Veins is ready and use them together.

Code:
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Arcane Power

The most efficient way to use them is to wait for a MBarr proc, get 3 stacks of AB, cast PoM use AB then pop the macro and cast AM and continue the normal rotation.

*The macros for Invisibility and Ice Block are also useful for this spec.
*If you can manage to use Evocation on the last two seconds of Icy Veins you’ll get a significant reduction on the channelling time and you won't get interrupted or pushed back by damage.


Variations:

Some people choose to spend points on threat reduction or on reducing the pushback suffered from damaging attacks. If your gear is not very high I’d suggest going with reducing pushback but as your damage increases you might be inclined to take threat reduction.
There is another important arcane spec that goes down the fire tree to pick up Improved Scorch but not only is it useless when it there is at least one Fire / FFB mage in the raid, it does less DPS overall though 10% crit chance for the raid is a nice buff if you are not obsessed with self performance but team work. I wouldn’t suggest going down the fire tree to pick it up because in practice keeping up scorch and DPSing with arcane becomes a hassle.


Frostfire – 0/53/18 Example

The thing you must understand about frostfire is that it benefits from both fire and frost talents. To take full advantage of this new mechanic you want to stack the critical strike bonus multiplier of both talents resulting in a spec that takes the best of both. Taking advantage of Burnout, Ice Shards and Ignite you get 190% increased critical damage. When using Chaotic Skyflare Diamond and 4 T7 bonus you reach 198%. If you don’t count the DOT effect you get 158% increased critical damage which is why you will hit for about 3000 damage with FFB but will crit for 10000 damage. Options for frostfire include dropping Combusion and the odd point from Master of Elements to add a couple of points in Improved Blizzard - this may make a few of the hard mode Ulduar fights easier, but is very situational.

Stat priorisation

Hit (until Cap) - Spellpower - Crit* - Haste – Spirit - Int
*when your crit reaches around 50 % raid buffed, Haste starts to become better.
Glyphs

The glyphs for Frostfire are Glyph of Frostfire / Glyph of Molten Armor / Glyph of Living Bomb. Do not take Improved Scorch, as above.

Rotation

Frostfire: Living Bomb – Scorch x5, FFB, pyroblast on hot streak proc, refresh Living Bomb (once exploded), FFB. Keep Scorch up.

AOE rotation: Living Bomb, Flamestrike, Blizzard. Exact combination depends on how quickly the mobs are likely to die!

Living bomb can be cast on multiple targets, which obviously increases the hot streak proc chance on detonation. Best benefit is probably from casting on 2-3 additional targets, and only refreshing if the fight is a long one. Be warned: this will increase your aggro markedly if the tanks are trying to hold large groups.


Frostfire macros

To maximize our damage we have two spells Combustion and Icy Veins. We want to use them at the same time but we also want to prepare ourselves to use them as we can take agro off a tank in seconds. First thing we want to do is cast invisibility on an ideal situation where we are not taking damage or are subject to a DoT effect. Once we are out of combat we’ll lose all agro on the boss and will want to click invisibility off. I strongly recommend using a macro for this because trying to click off a buff in a 25man can result in deleting a useful buff like BoW of GotW. Once we are back in combat we want to refresh scorch and living bomb and then activate both skills at the same time and spam FFB and Pyroblast if it procs.
*Some people choose not to use these two at the same time.

The macros to use would be the following:

Code:
/cancelaura Invisibility
/cast Invisibility

Click this macro once, you will turn invisible, click it again you’ll loose invisibility. This can be applied to Ice Block too:

Code:
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

The cool down macro would be:

Code:
/cast Combustion
/cast Icy Veins
*If you have 2 Tier 7 set bonus you might want to add “/use Mana Sapphire” to the macro and take benefit from the extra spell power.

Refresh in progress. Arcane is out of date.